


Little Black Planner

by astramaxima (shotgunsinlace)



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Road Trips, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25758115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shotgunsinlace/pseuds/astramaxima
Summary: What is there to do when they only have one summer before reassignment? Try to run away, of course.
Relationships: Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik & Agent Stone, Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik/Agent Stone
Comments: 5
Kudos: 54





	Little Black Planner

**Author's Note:**

> _"Don't look back, you can never look back."_   
> 
> 
>     — _The Boys of Summer_ // **Don Henley**

    August 7th, 2023

Burnt sunlight skims the lake’s flat surface like tangled driftwood.

A breeze folds the ripples like the plucked chords of an acoustic guitar, mimicking the melancholy lyrics of a Don Henley song, but that may just be the car stereo picking up a stray radio signal from a tower somewhere east of him, with its lonesome red light flickering on that late Minnesotan evening. The air carries with it the smell of gasoline and burning wood, leaving cold kisses along Stone’s exposed forearms.

The hood he sits on bleeds heat through his jeans.

He grips his phone—on vibrate, not silent—as he watches the colorful splashes of nature dwindle down to darkness not unlike the inside of a wolf’s mouth closing around him.

When the first dots of starlight pierce through the gaseous layers of atmosphere, he pockets the phone and gets back in the car.

He turns up the volume.

    May 21st, 2021

Both letters arrive at the same time, conveniently delivered in a matte black mailing envelope, innocuously resting on his desk by the time he walked in at seven in the morning. There is a box of chocolates strategically placed over the sender’s address. An elegant fountain pen that is not his is pinned underneath the gold ribbon.

Robotnik takes the news as well as Stone does.

It was only a matter of time before the powers that be deemed them too hazardous to each other’s wellbeing and work ethic.

Invaluable assets that they are, Agent Stone is to be reassigned to an undisclosed location by the end of the summer. The doctor is forced into extended leave until further notice with limited access to his playthings.

More than half of the laboratory does not make it through the night.

    June 1st, 2021

He stands alone on the heartless tarmac, necktie coiling venomously around his throat. The behemoth before him sits discarded, its lights snuffed for indiscretions that were never committed within the confines of its breathing, metallic walls.

The moonlight does not reflect against its armored panes of synthetic material. That privilege is unjustly gifted to the unfeeling spotlight of an equally unfeeling lot overcrowded with decommissioned tanks, jets, and SUVs.

Stone places his open palm against the cold exterior of the mobile lab and breathes with it, powered off, silenced, and abandoned.

    July 4th, 2021

The smell of coal and cigarette smoke permeates the fabric of summer air. The sizzle of cow blood on the grill sings a more alluring rhythm than the pop music spilling through the wireless speakers. The bustle of colleagues goes unregistered until a woman approaches him with a long, sweaty bottle of amber beer.

Pulled from her sleeve is a piece of paper and a lighter.

Stone saves it until he has fulfilled his networking quota for his paid day off, then burns it with the intention to commit the crime he has been falsely accused of.

    July 12th, 2021

Stone had expected the remoteness of the location and simplicity of the architecture. He had not expected the impeccable landscaping surrounding the house.

For the first time in his entire career, he called in sick and then drove three hours to the given coordinates with empty hands and an even emptier stomach. He drove to loiter outside of the electric fence. To sit on the hood of his car in nothing but old jeans and a black t-shirt, a pair of aviators to block out the blinding sun.

Stone knew the doctor knew he was there.

Stone waited for an hour before driving back home.

    July 13th, 2021

He drove for three hours after getting off work.

He walked through the fences without a care in the world and they let him through.

He set a cup of coffee on the porch and then left. 

    July 14th, 2021

Stone did it again.

    July 15th, 2021

And again.

    July 16th, 2021

And again.

    July 17th, 2021

Robotnik stood on the porch with his hands tucked under his armpits, looking as imposing as a kicked dog in a pair of black slacks and a red sweater. Oil smears on his face, hair a disarrayed wreck, Stone wondered if he caught him off-guard.

It was ten past noon on a Saturday and Stone had brought lunch for two.

They stood across from each other—expectantly, standoffishly—until Robotnik finally caved and stepped aside, granting Stone entry into his fortress.

What little Stone could see of the barebones house was spotless, for the exception of the living room where dozens of cybernetic carcasses lay strewn about with their holographic headstones aglow.

Take his children away and the doctor makes new ones.

His salt and pepper beard clashed with his perfectly symmetrical mustache as he told Stone not to get comfortable.

Stone offered him a shave.

Robotnik offered him the couch for what remained of the weekend.

    July 23rd, 2021

The remoteness of Robotnik’s space lent itself to a lack of prying eyes. 

Government assigned. 

Stone was made to wonder why the man had stepped back and down, accepting the offer of paid leave so easily when the year before Robotnik had rained down hell at their attempt to silence his return. He refused Stone an answer time again.

The remoteness granted shelter under starlight and Stone tried his best to name as many celestial bodies as he could remember from his days as an Eagle Scout.

Altair in the constellation Aquila.

Deneb in the constellation Cygnus.

Vega in the constellation Lyra.

Robotnik pointed out the star clusters M22 and M28 but segued back into a detailed explanation regarding Vega, a Japanese goddess who fell in love with a mortal man and became separated by the Celestial River of the Milky Way, where once a year a bridge of magpies allows her and Altair to be together again. Orihime and Hikobishi. True star-crossed lovers.

Stone looked up from the telescope to gaze at the smattering of blues over black with his own eyes.

Robotnik was always a very good weaver. Not of stories, perhaps, but of new life.

    July 27th, 2021

His apartment was fully packed. Every miscellaneous trinket Stone had collected over the years ready to meet him wherever Uncle Sam deemed him necessary until further notice.

Two weeks until the reassignment went into full effect.

At eight in the morning, Stone walked into the office and deposited the last of his documents. He declared he would be taking his two-week’s worth of paid time off effective immediately and walked back out of the building.

Nobody stopped him.

    July 28th, 2021

Robotnik fought him on the idea, even as he threw a small bag of essentials in the back of Stone’s Range Rover and powered down his robots, locked the windows and doors, and amped up security.

Bad ideas buried under undisclosed intentions.

    July 31st, 2021

They stopped in Middle of Nowhere, on the side of a vacant highway illuminated by fireworks over a valley to the south of them. No road signs, no light posts, no gas stations, or diners for miles. Only cicadas and the music blaring from the radio that Robotnik turned up as he kicked open the Rover’s door.

He stumbled out, arms outstretched to dance in the middle of the night under the full glow of red, white, and blue. Crackles and explosions, peals of laughter that could only ever belong to him.

Glimpsed freedom.

Stone watched from behind the wheel, through the bug-smeared windshield, and sang along.

    August 2nd, 2021

Stone drove for so long he could no longer feel his legs when they arrived at what would be their destination: unplanned, unaccepted by the doctor who paced back and forth as Stone checked them in to the derelict motel.

They could never find the two of them here. Too far off the grid. No phones, no fancy tech, no credit cards. Just hard cash and a _need_.

They ate at a diner down the road in Somewhere, Nevada. Dust covered the vinyl booths and the waitresses were friendly. The floors were sticky. The jukebox swallowed his last quarter.

    August 3rd, 2021

They fumbled like men uncertain how to touch another. Stone was experienced, and Robotnik’s programming was dated.

It did not stop Stone from fucking him until he took his given name from Robotnik’s mouth, and in return, delivered a confession into defective hardware.

    August 4th, 2021

Stone was not an engineer, but he tried his best to fix the machine he accidentally broke. Readjust software with new lines of code, the same that were deleted upon its creation: tenderness, affection, patience, love.

He believed himself successful in rebooting the entire system, but installation would take long. It would stall, restart, and then stall again. Progress bar reaching 14% before dropping back to 0. Sometimes, the bar dropped into the negatives courtesy of some bug he had been unsuccessful in reformatting.

Stone sank his hands into sparking wires and snapped them into place, even as Robotnik yelled, the virus of his estranged motherboard finally acknowledged in that motel room, defenseless, so far away from his fortress and meticulously self-created sentinels.

Stone never knew machines could cry.

    August 7th, 2021

His plane was set to leave in four hours.

It was eleven in the morning when Stone walked up to the doctor’s porch, disregarding the escort of black SUVs lining the otherwise empty stretch of road.

Robotnik was waiting for him, handsome in his black coat despite the sweltering heat. It was meant as a reminder of a bygone era. 

A genuine farewell.

Stone handed him a cup of coffee and a little black book—a planner with detailed instructions on how to properly maintain aging software.

The doctor did not demand he stay, even after Stone kissed his mouth goodbye on that dusty porch.

Someone had to bleed on that day. Might as well been the organic counterpart.

    August 7th, 2023

A planner filled to the brim with easy-to-follow coffee recipes, tips on how to care for himself during and in the aftermath of exhausting projects, reminders to shower and eat, to not rely solely on sugary drinks and granola bars, that it is okay to say no whenever bullies who outranked him demanded a pound of flesh and blood and tears, that it was okay to say yes to moments of reprieve. Inspirational quotes, anecdotal blurbs of their time together, holidays both real and fake, photographs sneakily taken on Stone’s phone.

A planner rife with sentimentality, its pages filled with all the unspoken words an agent could no longer bear to carry for his genius. The curls of a needle tip liquid gel pen etching into the little black notebook all the vulnerabilities they could never bring themselves to share either out of duty, or deeply rooted pain.

A two-year planner, its printed lines and those in-between filled to bursting with a devotion that escapes reason.

And on the last page, a subtle request. 

Stone’s phone number on today’s date, 1800 hours.

He wonders if Robotnik ever even opened it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is nothing but an unsent love letter.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Krummholz](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26193142) by [Hereticality](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hereticality/pseuds/Hereticality)




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